


Fires in the Night

by beng



Series: Fires in the Night [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M, Gen, Post-Battle of Five Armies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-26 22:18:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2668391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beng/pseuds/beng
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine Tauriel tracing her finger along the lines of the tattoos on Fili’s back and shoulders.</p><p>Our two heroes have survived the Battle and attempt to make the first steps in a world that is suddenly so hollow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fires in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [bow-and-sword-filiel](http://bow-and-sword-filiel.tumblr.com/) for the prompt and iscatterthemintimeandspace for calling in some common sense :)
> 
> Note: this is a completely separate story that has nothing to do with the Dragonsolver universe.

 

 

Tauriel was sitting on her heels before a fire, feeding twigs and tufts of grass into the sickly flame. Night was coming. The battle for Erebor was over — as were her hopes and her career. Everything was cold and wet, and dark, and dead. She felt numb.

The elf cast a glance at the yellow-haired dwarf lying on his stomach besides her. His hands were tucked beneath his chest, his face turned away from her. He was breathing raggedly, the deep wound on his back no doubt hurting like... Well, a lot. But morgul blades hurt more, she thought tiredly.

"Lie still," she murmured before bending down to blow on the flame. Slowly, reluctantly, the fire gained strength. Tauriel started adding some bigger branches.

She stared into the flame as she worked, breaking up the branches and placing them carefully, to build up the fire as soon as possible, a good fire, a warm and enduring fire that would last them through the night. 

We survived, she thought, the words reluctant and slow in her mind. I survived, and he survived. Kili didn't. She swallowed thickly. But we are alive. We will stay alive. That's what Kili would have wanted.

"Sit up," she said gently. "You need to take off your chainmail before I can deal with that wound. I'll help you."

Fili turned his head slightly, resting his brow against the moss. Beneath all that tangled hair, his face was scrunched up in pain. "Just leave me," he uttered through clenched teeth. "I didn't ask you to save me."

Tauriel just shook her head wordlessly, her gaze drawn to his hair. Golden yellow, like birch leaves in autumn. Not brown. Not wild, but only ruffled, with traces of braids showing at his temples.

"Sit up," she said again. "I won't let you bleed to death."

"I don't need your help. You should have left me on that battlefield... I should have remained there... I belong with them…"

The elf took a deep breath. She had found him as she had been leaving, almost stumbled over him as she had fought to swallow her tears. Exiled, humiliated, loved and then so cruelly abandoned, she hadn't seen where she was going, she had just wanted to get as far away as possible. The bright hair had caught her attention though. When she’d seen the bleeding wound on his back and heard the slightest of moans through the ringing in her ears, she had just picked him up and stumbled away, two lost people united by their loss.

"Sit up," she repeated more firmly. "I will not let you bleed to death."

 

***

Sitting behind him in the orange glow of the fire, Tauriel ran her hand over the naked, tan skin of the dwarf she might have called brother one day. She brushed his matted hair away from his shoulders, revealing solid, dark lines running across his back and shoulders. The elf frowned. Why would someone mark their skin like that?

"Who did this to you?" she asked. "Why?"

Fili was breathing heavily, knuckles white as he clasped his knees.

"If you’re so bent on stitching me up, then do it quickly. Please," he grunted. "Hurts..."

Still frowning, Tauriel drew back and started rummaging in her belt pouch. As part of her guard uniform, it included a needle with thread, and a small bottle of spirit to clean any scratches. The needle was usually used to mend torn clothing, but she didn't have anything better here, in the middle of the night. There was no athelas to heal the elder prince.

Tauriel winced as she disinfected the needle. The only prince, she corrected herself. The only one left of the true line of the kings.

"Tell me," she asked again, placing her cool hands on Fili's back and hoping it would soothe his pain. "Why do you have these lines?"

Fili groaned when she made the first stitch, hands clenched in fists now and eyes screwed shut against the heat of the fire.  The elf hesitated for a moment, but then pursed her lips and continued her heart-wrenching task.

"It’s from some drawings by my uncle,” Fili gasped as her needle reached a particularly painful stretch. “Only thing left from him.”

Tauriel bit her lip, trying to keep her hand steady.

"Thorin?” she wondered. This was clearly not an answer she had expected. Then she remembered she’d seen him lying half buried under a warg, a broken spear sticking out from his chest, and she had to draw a deep breath to stop the memory right there — right before Kili had thrown himself at the pale orc laughing over the dwarf king’s body…

"No. Frerin. My other uncle…"

The elf focused her gaze on the interlacing, black lines, their pattern spreading out in strictly mirrored angles. The motifs were calming in their stability. Their accuracy was astonishing, mesmerizing.

"I didn't know you had two uncles..." she murmured.

Fili tried to chuckle, and then hissed as the tremors ran down his back. Tauriel found her left hand tracing the lines again, as she tried to somehow soothe him.

"I didn't know you thought that's something you should know," Fili murmured finally. 

The elf bent her head, hiding the shadow that passed over her face. With their different looks and now the strange lines on Fili’s back, it was in the little things that she was reminded he was Kili’s brother. It was in their way with words. Their resilience.

"Uncle Frerin used to draw," Fili continued, wincing as Tauriel pulled herself together and pricked him with the needle again. "Mother said he drew... architraves from Erebor. Balusters. Friezes, cornices. That sort of thing. Geometry... and... and - ouch! - architecture."

Tauriel glanced at his markings again, bold parallel lines and patterns hugging his strong shoulders and running down his spine.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You'll have a scar across it now."

Fili didn't respond, just tensed as she moved on to his other side.

"Kili didn't have them," she said quietly. "Why?"

"Because... because - augh! - he didn't have the patience to sit still for so long..."

Tauriel smiled even as she had to bite her lip to stop it from trembling. Yes, she could picture her dwarven archer too well, so full of life and smiles and unthinking courage...

"Tauriel?" Fili had tensed under her hands again.

"How, in the name of Mahal, do you know what my brother did or did not have on his bare back?"

 

***

When she was done, Tauriel helped him put on his tattered shirt and vest, and then added some more wood to the fire. She split what little elven bread she had with him, and then closed her eyes, feeling the warmth in her face, trying to focus on little things, take little steps and breathe very slowly and carefully.

There was a dull ache in her heart, one she thought would never leave her again. She would have to carry it with her for the rest of her immortal life. She would never regret what she had with Kili; her only regret was that she would never know where it would have taken them, what would have come of it. She would never have an answer to that.

Tauriel opened her eyes to see Fili staring into the fire just as glumly as she had.

Where to, she wondered. Where could they go? Would he want to go back now?

His people were probably looking for him, him being the heir to the throne. She should have brought him to them at once, not dragged him here, under the eaves of Mirkwood. She hadn’t been thinking clearly.

Absent-mindedly, Tauriel pulled out Kili’s runestone she had tucked in the folds of her dress. She turned it over in her hand, feeling with her thumb the simple engraving. Fili looked at her, his gaze then dropping to the stone.

“He...” Fili’s voice caught in his throat. “He gave it to you.”

Tauriel nodded.

“What will you do with it?”

“I don’t know,” Tauriel muttered. “Keep it? Return it? Elves value memories above physical things.”

She glanced up at the dwarf. “You could return it.”

A shadow passed over his face as he stared at his hands clenched helplessly in his lap.

“Go back and face _amad_ when she comes to Erebor?” he whispered. “Tell mother her King, her only remaining brother and her youngest son are dead? That her eldest has failed so thoroughly that nothing will ever wash the shame from his name?”

Tauriel reached out her hand and covered his. She tried to smile, watery as that smile was.

“She deserves to know, Fili. She deserves to hear it from your own mouth. And you should go back and be king. Your people… Your people don’t deserve losing Thorin Oakenshield, and then you and your brother both.”

The dwarf cast her a long glance, eyes dark with sorrow and the unnerving confirmation that, unlike her blunt, mouthy archer, the eldest prince could and would read between the lines.

“Only on one condition,” he finally said.

“You come with me, sister.”

 

 

 


End file.
